


i shall find the sullen rocks and skies

by damaraine



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:02:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damaraine/pseuds/damaraine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>" The lava of the volcano shot up hot from under the sea<br/>One thing leads to another and you made an island of me ... " </i>
</p><p>Damara Megido has spent her entire life being tossed around by errant waves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. between land and sea

The stench of decay had rolled in with the waves, tackled onto the scent of salt and wind.

Damara had always hated the sea. Not a particularly convenient arrangement as she had resided, for most of her life, in a hive cluster on the cusp of the coastline. She hated how it wisped around the toes of her shoes with the pretence of being weak. Unlike many of her kind, she did not put her trust in its depths.

She stood back as it flooded her shoes, glaring at the waves as they rattled the boats anchored further up the shore, up and down, up and down. The mild tide was sloshing around her toes. Decomposition was being plunged up her nose, the rank smell attaching itself her to her clothes and her hair. Either some pirates had met a very unfortunate end, or some kind of imperial melodrama was going on beneath the tide.

 _Whatever_ , she thought. The Empress's rule stretched this far across the planet in name only. Any escapades happening at the bottom of the sea did not affect her. She supposedly reserved her coddling for creatures higher up in the food chain than a few provincial rustbloods , such as a brightly coloured school of cuttlefish or the flipper creatures she used to pull her hypothetical chariot. Of course, she was reputed to have crafted that chariot with the help of a small army of nut creatures and the bones of the elder gods, so one had to wonder the reliability of all of this. Maybe it was propaganda that the tides brought in to cling to her clothes.

As she trudged back up the cliff path, she could smell burning. Lest someone was roasting nut creatures out of season, it meant that someone was setting a bonfire. Being of simple fishertroll stock, the residents of her hive cluster had little occupation other than to smoke their wares for the market over the fire whilst recounting stories they'd told more times than they were able to count. Occasionally, someone spiced up the mix with the snippets of whatever they'd managed to catch craning under the cliff dwelling blue blood's window. Not often, though. No one sensible would risk their skin just to hear a shred of gossip.

Damara, if asked, would declare those times her favourite in the village. She enjoyed listening to the stories and the crackling of voices and flame did well to block out the sound of the sea. Too meek to be included in the conversation, too shy to try and include herself, she had little occupation other than stewing in her own juices, and the stories, although repetitive held good reprieve from that.

The entertainment for tonight was a story mutated from a piece of gossip that had been pulled ashore by a foreign fisher rig sweeps ago. Damara loved this one. A girl - a highblooded troll with more brawn than brain - becomes disillusioned with her lifestyle and goes to seek asylum on the moon. Damara admired the character's initiative; being of a weak disposition, she never thought herself to be capable of reaching anywhere further than the inland market. Considering that, she would never reach the moon. There was also the fact that the moon was very far away and immensely inhospitable, but who even thought of that? Certainly not Damara - she was fairly sure that if there were no substantial bodies of water on the moon, she'd be willing to deal with most any peculiar extra -terrestrial creatures.

Her lusus nuzzled around her ankles, the nylon socks proving themselves a good scratching post for her fraught guardian. But the story did not seem to sooth her, as she kept ramming her pale, fleshy appendages into Damara's calf. She dismissed it, though - she had always been fractious, like her charge, but far more overt about it.

They were not roasting fish over the fire. A musclebeast colt had lost control of its legs and skittered off the cliff onto the beach below. The blueblood that lived on the cliff spent his time cultivating a herd of these creatures, and the blue stamp on hind heralded the late beast as one of them. The rustbloods had a hard time deciding whether they should take it or not, whether their indigo overlords would chastise for them. But the winter had been hard, and the fish had decided to swim towards warmer tides. So they took it with the intention of making the traditional East Beforan dish of 'pony burgers made of meat that we stole'.

Damara watched the pony make revolutions on the spit, its blue stamp spinning in and out of view. She didn't feel remorseful. The bluebloods would probably spit at them across the street if it were not impolite. One horse was nothing in a life time of having to clean spit off of your shoes.

The meat was delicious, but she could not shake the feeling that it might have tasted better had they acquired it without theft. But that said, it would be better if they did not have to acquire the majority of their meals in that manner, it would be better if their blood allowed them to do so. Even that better would it be if their blood allowed them more than twelve sweeps, or if the opportunity, if weren't so frail to get out of this place.

But Damara had to take what she got, which, at that moment, was some rather suspiciously roasted meat and a lusus with an irritated horn. You could not afford to dream if you could not afford lusus ointment first.

~

As it turned out, an opportunity presented itself soon enough. As time went on, they became more hard pressed for supplies - the fishmarket had no sympathy for other appetites than its own. Many a grown troll wept over the fact the customers would never be satisfied until all of the fish in the ocean were salted and put in jars. The very same grown trolls, who trudged hivebound each evening with empty nets, who had the bright idea of thinning the herds of hoofbeasts that dominated the cliffs above them.

Despite their taste slathered with grubsauce between two slices of bread, they were not well received when dragged back to the village with their heads lolling on their sides. Damara watched the procession go by, wondering how the highbloods above them had taken it. Whether they knew. The things that could occur if they didn't made her blanch, and retreat back into her hive.

Yet, the highblood who watched over them, but did little more than that - watch - did not notice. For a while there, they ate with all of the decadence of the empress, who looked as if, Damara thought bitterly, she had never contemplated dieting in her life. Or at least, that's what she heard. It was very hard to discern someone's appearance from the sardonic cartoons people drew in the sand when they were very, very angry. Just as the blueblood would be if he noted the gradual thinning of his herd.

Her stomach turned at the thought. The Blueblood was notoriously strong and prone to fits of rage. If provoked, he could probably tear the roof of her hive clean off. She rolled over in the pile of skins, frayed fishnets, things that had gone astray and ended up in her quiet, klepto pocket. She had amassed it throughout her time, and was very proud of it, despite being constantly reminded of the knowledge that she was housing rather a lot of random crap. She could hide among the critters within it if anything came to pass. She put faith in the concept that the insectile rustling coming from the pile would put the fear of their benevolent troll god into him. Or at least the fear of getting a scratch on his perfectly moisturized hands. Evidently, her views on the upper class where somewhat twisted. That's kind of what happens when you live most of your life in fear of them.

As it turned out, that fear was well deserved. Damara eventually fell asleep in the pile, among the bugs and plastic. Whilst she slept peacefully, less than a mile away from her trolls were partaking in a more active pursuit. Which is to say, straddling the backs of the noble hoofbeasts until they submit to having a piece of ragged metal slashed across their throats. It was a disquieting business, for both parties.

Especially so, that night. The trolls responsible found themselves wiping sweat off of their brows and looking down at their spoils almost as if they did not look forward to eating them. They dawdled rancorously, forever finding excuses to delay the haul of their game down the cliffside. The sun was nearly up, and their skin was beginning to freckle with flecks of rust, so they dragged the hoofbeasts with their weary arms and made their way home.

But the blue blood had been watching, from the roof of his hive not far away. Scandalized, angry, grieving, it all boiled into a rage soon enough. The muscles in his hands quivered as he grabbed his weapon and parted the crowd of mourning hoofbeasts.

The first troll had not reached far at all, having to drag a corpse twice his weight behind him and he went out like a light. Another was further down the cliff path and a single punch took him out. The third was in the hive cluster illuminated below them. That's where he headed next.

Damara did not at first hear him, despite his being the troll equivalent of the fee thigh of thumb giant. If she did not hear the screams of her anguished neighbours, then she would most certainly hear his footsteps.

She dived out of her hive to see what was wrong, to find a collective state of panic around her. The term ghost town suddenly had semblance to her; the fires had all been stomped out, only the scorched entrails of the flames remaining. The corpses of people she had known all of her life lay about, looking idle. She jumped as some of the smoke from the remnants of the bonfires brushed against her ankles. It felt as if it had rooted her to the ground. Doomed to repeat a single, awful moment over and over again. She could think of nothing worse.

The perpetrator looked almost as befuddled as she did. He had slung the broken husk of a hoofbeast across his shoulder. Even from a distance, he towered over her, and he was splotched indigo for having allied himself with the sun for too long.

Their eyes met. Something in Damara's mind had, after what felt like an age of searching and riffling and thrashing about, finally managed to put things together and she skittered away like the hoofbeast that had tangled them up in this mess in the first place. She tripped over a log, a limb, something that she could tell had gone limp a while ago, but caught herself. Her legs ran in uneven paces, over rocks and steps until she skidded down the wet sand of the beach.

Her eyes gobbled up the sight of the anchored boats, fishing rigs that she knew how to sail. She forgot everything as she mounted the side of the nearest boat, a smaller article with equipped with daunting wooden ores. She pulled the tarpaulin up of it and stuffed it into the depths. She pushed the boat into the water and got in it, sailing away as fast as she could. She had ingested one slab of hoofbeast meat in total. She did not think she deserved to die.

She rowed out, smoothing the brackish waves and having salt graze her skin. Only did she look back when she was behind the rapids. She saw the blueblood sprawled out in the tides, his gargantuan strength doing little to dispel the foam washing over him. He looked almost as if he preferred it that way.

~

It took a day spent rowing along the coast line for Damara to realize the absence of her lusus. She’d been so intent on self-preservation that she'd forgotten the one thing she cared for most. For the first time, Damara screamed. She screamed and she snivelled and she hated herself for it. Guilt was festering in her gut and she did not know what she could do about it. Going back was not an option. What if the blueblood still lay in the waves, waiting to ambush? She could not return to those corpses, oh no.

After her sobbing subsided she set aside her ores and hugged her knees. The ocean was calm, relaxingly apathetic. The moon was large in the sky, obscure only by the wisps of clouds that had been passing through. The story of the girl who went to the moon was large in her mind, along with the remembrance of smoked meat and wood fires. She would be just as that girl had been - they had made their beds in entirely different places but they were both intent on sleeping in them.

She had gone to the effort of living, and she was sure as hell, heaven, the equivalent place where trolls went to die that she was going to live. Damara Megido picked up the ores and started rowing. But it soon dawned on her that she knew nothing of the world, and the ocean was very, very vast. The concept that she could be tossed out of her boat at any moment by a passing wave reminded her that she was, in the grand scheme of things, very, very small. She didn't want to be small.

But she didn't know how to fix that, so she just ploughed on.

~

After three weeks and four separate panic attacks, she reached land. It was not land of the coast she had been pursuing, for she had been swept away from that by an errant wave. This one was speckled with trees, their roots trailing so far down the cliff face that they obscured the visage entirely. The beach crunched under her boat as she cast ashore.

Desolate was the setting, and only more so because it was complete devoid of anyone at all. She pulled the tarpaulin, battered and torn from the journey but mostly intact, over the boat and pulled the weapon from her strife specibus. A small knife, hardly sharp enough to prick. She had never expected to use it.

Circling until she found the spot where the cliff levelled out. She hiked up it, hoping the dense forest would hide her from any attackers. She did not know where she was, and if there were inhabitants, she did not know their ways.

She found herself on high alert, jumping at every little rustle. A rather counterproductive activity, she found, as she was in a forest and trees were predisposed to doing that. She ventured further into the forest, finding, rather surprisingly, nothing but trees. She hated trees, she decided on what felt like her third lap around the perimeter, almost as much as she hated the ocean.

She wandered lost through the forest, the foliage swallowing any evidence of her pilgrimage. Through the thinning trees, she could see the warm glow of torchlight. She stepped forward, the sound of her footsteps echoing only into empty rabbit holes.

She was greeted with the jovial sound of applause, and a less jovial sound of moaning. Her first instinct was to sniff, lest someone was being roasted over a flame. But the smell of burnt flesh tinged with pure terror did not reveal itself as much as the reverent response to seeing one troll stick his intimidatingly sized troll shlong into one of his cohorts did.

All of a sudden, she was reminded of home, when she had crouched beneath the blueblood's window late at night to regard similar fare. She could even feel the fear of discovery and imminent death brewing in her stomach. She fell to the ground, suddenly taken with a fit of homesickness.

The sun began to dapple the tops of the leaves and she lost herself away among them. She could feel some of her worst nightmares manifesting themselves as she walked away, and she wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up into a ball. But her feet were persistent, so much so that they kept trying to motor onwards after someone fell on her from above. _Of all the unlikely things that could happen_ , she thought. She was going to die, crushed to death from above from a divine intervention, a bird shit gone massively wrong, a drone coming to punish her for her cowardice, a rogue lusus bestowing parental karma upon her. Perhaps it was her own imagination, which had clearly outgrown her by now, angry at her incompetence.

She had not, after all, even tried to move.

Her face smashed into the ground, she had little idea who her attacker was. What she did know was that they were rather heavy. She struggled a bit, freeing her ear from its grounded position. The weight was lifted from her back, perhaps provoked by the assurance that she was not, in fact, dead.

She rolled over, and grabbed for her knife. It had been lodged into the ground and didn't look as if it wanted to come out anytime soon. Looking out, she saw that she was surrounding by wraiths, peeking out from behind the trees. There were many of them, but they seemed rather in awe of her butter knife, so they let her be. Her attacker was poised right in front of her, looking a little worse for wear. She could not tell whether he was naturally tall or whether it was just an effect of his having hair that extended about three inches upwards, cut through with a vivid orange.

"That probably won't do ya much good, tinkerbell," he said, whilst extending a hand towards her. She had no idea what he was saying, but took the arm anyway. Yanking the needles from her hair, she pushed them under his chin. She did not trust him and his many wide eyed apostles, hiding just out of sight. Not yet anyway.

He paled and slowly flung his arms away from her. Contemplating something about a hit and runs (something that had never occurred in her now ravaged homeland, because apparently no one was quite so interested in fish to abduct them at knife point), she started to mumble beneath her breath about negotiations and such.

And then, most bizarrely, her captor began to speak to her. What's more, she understood him, through all of his broken language.

"How did you get here, doll? We're a bit outta ways ..."

"I sailed."

"From where? Like I said, we're a bit outta ways."

"You're really not. I only sailed across one ocean to get here."

At that, he laughed. The eyes in the forest set themselves at ease, set themselves into sockets and revealed themselves. Many young trolls in ragged clothing. She was terrified, her hands shaking around her needles. She kept her posture rigid, in spite of it all. His laughter put her at ease somewhat.

"You never told me where you were from ..." He repeated. She didn't quite understand why he was so curious. It crossed her mind, just fleetingly, that perhaps he had heard of the damage done to her dwelling and wanted to punish her for her cowardice. She promptly realized quite how idiotic that was, and left it to fester elsewhere in her mind.

"I don't know," she shrugged, keeping a firm grip on her newfound needles.

This was met with a chorus of snorting, ungraceful sniggers that did not so much reek of mirth as they did of solvent abuse. She wondered whether these trolls had even learnt how to laugh at all. There was not a single lusus in sight.

"How can you not know ..." His forehead shrunk into his ridiculous hairdo. The frown lines suggested that this was actually stressing him out.

"Well, it's not as if the land I lived in and the oceans I sailed across had labels on them!" she said, for lack of a better response. It was the truth, after all. _And I honestly don't think that the sea creatures or my neighbours would have needed them, either. Neither of them can read,_ she thought to herself.

"Wow, no need to be snappy," he held his hands up, seemingly amused. He seems self-assured, but his speech was slovenly. Littered with mistakes. Coherent, but only just.

She was left at a loss. What do you say to the person whose land you are invading and tried to attack after they fell on you?

He seemed to know, as he resumed the conversation for her.

"Look here, doll. If you need a place ... say, to stay, or whatever, then you're welcome here. You're lost, ain't you? We all are." He gestured to the watching faces, who gave peaky grins from beyond the tree trunks. He then extended that arm to her.

Weighing up her options, she took it.


	2. all the world was waking (i never could go back)

His name was Rufioh, and despite his penchant for falling from mid-air, he was okay. The former of which was very unfortunate, as he inhabited a complex of hammocks and nets interlaced in the branches of the trees. The eyes, which had assembled themselves into full structures after she had accepted his offer, followed him around relentlessly. They were lost, reputedly, but they seemed to know this place as if they had built it themselves.

She refused to get lost among the crowd. She had not uttered a word, but her position, the one she retained on a hammock on the edges of their world, scraping at the dredges of activity, gave her a sort of weak, flighty strength. The lack of activities and the schedule in which she did them resembled home, which reminded her of her lusus, which squashed all activity other than staring up at the sky in self-loathing. She must have seemed such a pathetic creature then.

This did not deter Rufioh. They had exchanged exactly twenty words since her induction into this weird gathering, yet he seemed hankering to accumulate more. He approached her, on occasion; with a rectangular device he called a husktop under one arm and scrolls of paper under the other. He would set up the husktop in the centre of the hammock, over the bit where the branch lay, and smooth out the scrolls on top of it.

He would be very annoying with his scrolls; constantly pointing to places and saying "is this where you're from? They have some seriously great stories there ...", or like "c'mon, how about here?", and "seriously, doll, ya gotta be from somewhere ..." to which she would respond, quite petulantly, that might be, but she didn't know where, and she didn't know how to read those things he kept waving under her nose.

He would then open up the husktop and load an episode of something. Sometimes a frog would leap into her throat and she would strike Rufioh around his ears, saying that she had watched this once from the highblood's window. Those were the only series that they watched to the end. He tired of the others quickly.

His visits became a staple of her life on the edge of the hammock, which was chronicled to be a perilous existence, what with all the rogue birds and the insects that flocked to her garish red uniform. They provided an activity that wasn't hissing at cicadas.

One time he brought only a map.

"You've come at an opportune time," she had said. "There are two insects mating right near my foot and I am in need of someone to scare them away."

His expression was surprised, and sheepish. He ambled downwards a little bit.

"No, that is fine! They caught one glimpse of your hair and took it somewhere else. What do you want?" She sat up, tugging a thin blanket over her knees. She had not yet reached the period of her life where she had chosen to disregard social graces, and she was only just entering the part where she was enlightened of their existence.

He sat down beside her and gave a sort of shrug. He opened his mouth, possibly to say something he'd, at the time, presumed to be "suave" enough to justify his trek across his many, sleeping charges, who, even in their slumber, preened for his attention.

However, he did not. Perhaps it was because it was late, and the sun was fusing through the gaps in the clouds and the leaves, perhaps it was due to some inner turmoil, or maybe the weight of his gargantuan hair, crushing down on his brain, but he settled with a simple shrug and a "couldn't sleep."

"Then why didn't you get one of your numerous vassals to entertain you? I thought the point of this whole "Lost Boys" thing was to do that," she hugged her knees. She was not used to speaking so freely, and it kind of wore her out, a little. She then contemplated if that was his purpose here, his ploy - the cartograph to find their way around the foreign land, a tragic tale of insomnia to make her comply. The idea of her removal from her hammock, from dodging out from underneath the stars that she had glared at to spring forth to some place unknown was romantic, as had her nautical voyage had been and it terrified her.

She kept her panic attack in her head as he answered.

"Nah ... You can't just pick one of 'em, 'cause all the others get jealous. And I don't wanna do that to them ... This is kind of like their, I don't know ... their escape place ... I don't want to ruin that for them, doll ..." He reclined onto his back, took a moment for contemplation and rolled over to face her.

"Say, we should go. Do somethin'. Travel some, yeah?"

She flinched. "No, I'm ... I think I've done enough travelling for all my time. The last time I travelled I had a very bad experience with a flipper creature and an ore. I think it would be wiser just to stay here in case those bugs come back ..."

"That's a pretty lame excuse, darlin'. No one's ever done enough travelling. There's always new shit to see, you know? Go on an adventure, all that."

She did not say anything.

"I'd really love to see where you came from. I think your place is the real deal. Not like the 2D stuff we got here, but like … the real deal." His repetition of the phrase ‘real deal’ kind of concerned her. If he meant that he thought her land would be full of people with bizarrely coloured but still perfect hair and shame globes the size of their moon that were oiled daily, who talked in dramatic pauses and very poor one liners, then he would be sorely disappointed. The fact that he'd reduced her land to the colourful but mild background of one of his animes made her angry.

So, instead of saying something like that, she went with the genial "In "my place", everyone is dead. A troll much higher than us killed them all. I left my lusus behind and I think she too is dead now, probably. I have no wish to return."

You might have expected that to kill the conversation for a while, and then beat the injured chitter chatter over the head until it fell back down again, but no, he leapt straight back into action.

"F-cking hell, Damara. How could you do that? Why the hell did you leave her there?" There was disbelief in his voice, as was there disgust. What really got her was the fact that it was the first time where he sounded completely frank, no candied vagueness to his voice or anything.

Anger flared up, once again. Her words made their way out of her mouth in a snarl. "Don't look so horrified! If you were being chased by a murderous blueblood, then your first priority would probably not be going back for all of your "Lost Boys"! You probably would not even care! You do not even notice half of the people vying for your attention, there are so many of them! Do not even try to tell me I'm awful or cowardly because you would have done exactly the same. You would have escaped, and you would have ‘ _travelled_ ’ too."

She had never yelled at someone before. It came as a shock that her voice could even reach that level of volume. Her rage subsided immediately when she saw the pallid, shocked expression on his face.

"I'm sorry… I should not have told you, it probably sounds disgusting … I will leave, if you wish … I just feel awful about it. I miss my lusus so much. I feel so guilty but I don't want to go back. I don't want to face her or anyone, really," she hugged her knees so hard that they began to pale under her grip, trying to squeeze the entire dialogue out of existence. The truth of her verbal diarrhoea hung in the air, and not one for sharing her mind with others, it shamed her. So much for pride.

The orange tint sunk back into his features, and he cautiously slipped his hand onto her shoulder, and forced her chin up. It blossomed red where it had been crushed into her knees, and boasted a stitched pattern where it had rubbed against her socks.

"Nah, you're, uh ... probably right ... You were just a bit ... loud, is all. I'm sorry you had to go through that. For what it's worth, I never coulda done it. I'd probably just give myself up to the blue blood and hope he'd cull me or whatever. I don't think what you did was awful. I think you were ... I don't know ... brave, I guess ..."

It had not been brave. It had been cowardly, but she could here that he had not yet reattached his zoned out sugar back onto his voice - for once, he had sounded utterly true. She was easily won.

Had they been in one of their bizarre troll animes, the red in his hair would have reflected the red hearts in their eyes. But alas, they were not, but as they found, real life could be just as clichéd and painful. Imagine that!

"You know, one of those adventures would not be so ... bad, I suppose."

His face lit up as he led her up through the branches.

~

The leaves began to thin, and the edge of the forest began spindling away from outer clutches status into the centre of all activity. Damara found this to be very annoying. Hands grasped at her hair while she was sleeping, tugged at her ankles, petty punishments for unreturned red crushes. In the waking hours, the crowds condensed around her, with a sudden interest in her homeland, her hair, her clothes, her shoes ...

It was exhausting, and didn't quite predispose her towards companionship. Yet, she followed Rufioh up into the outer branches every night. They talked with a veracity, a sort of incessancy. She just liked being in his company. The sound of his voice, his sugar coated drawl was relaxing.

"Do you know the story of the girl on the moon?" She asked him, when the moon was big in the sky. It might have been a sweep since he fell on her, it might have been less. She found that she had had no concept of time in the forest, and she didn't so much mind. She just knew that enough time had passed for her to understand what Rufioh said in his native language.

"I think the girl was tyrian. Or maybe she was just dissatisfied. I do not know. I would like to go the moon one day." She knew that she would never have the brevity to risk the journey, but it was a nice thought. It was the first time she had admitted that. Rufioh gazed upwards in affirmative silence.

"Maybe one day I'll take you there, doll. Just you and me, take a picnic. I have a friend up there who could hook us up." He said this, precariously perched on a branch with one leg. She didn't know whether it was because of the fact that his stance, and the way that the light illuminated his garish hairdo and how that made him look like a giant cockatoo, but she had a hard time taking him seriously. She laughed.

“I would like that,” she said, before she loaded up her husktop, a leftover from a previous tenant of their group and put it to the back of her mind.

~

The crowds began to thin also, dwindling down to the few who were too meek to leave - which was a demographic comprised solely of Damara and Rufioh.

It was not as if it had happened over night. It was a gradual thing, with members of their party just growing less and less over time, until they were nothing but eyes in the forest, as Damara had first seen them. She harboured apathy towards the goings on that did not concern her directly, so she didn't even bother to ask.

Their abrupt solitude provoked them to venture outside the forest for the first time in such a long time that Rufioh seemed vaguely surprised to be able to walk straight without crashing face first into some sort of branching object. They stumbled down the dirt path Damara remembered tracing her way along so long ago.

The beach had remained the same. Piles of rocks climbed at the ankles of the ragged cliffs. Roots trailed down the cliff tops and the waves lapped at the shore, further along. Miraculously, her boat had remained there. Salt softened and vaguely damp, but still there.

Pulling the tarpaulin off, she took no notice of the thriving culture of moss and sea-creatures that it now played host to. She felt slightly nauseous, remembering the long days on the sea and her village, the soundtrack comprised solely of waves and her lusus. They embarked and she put it to the back of her mind, where most else festered.

They set off from the shore, looking into the shallows for their dinner. Rufioh had come prepared with a spear, and caught a fair few - mostly, the fishes who lay gargling on the surface, those that had not yet recovered from the shock of hearing "BANGARANG!" at a volume that was probably somewhat equivalent to the announcement of the second coming for fishes. Damara laughed herself silly at his sudden display of enthusiasm.

The conversation sobered after the sea creatures had acclimatized themselves to swim away whenever they heard anything louder than the drone of sea water, and the last martyred fish was flipped into the bucket.

He fiddled with the spear and mentioned something about a game. Damara was only half listening.

"I've been thinking ... I don't think playing is a good idea ... but I'll probably end up playin' anyway. Did they tell you about that? The ... game thing, yeah?"

She had indeed been informed of this "... game thing", yeah. But the messages had been impartial and hard to decipher - sent by fellows that she had added but not frequently spoken too.

She nodded and stressed something about a language barrier. He continued, unabashed. Something about it being a good opportunity, something else about it being "pretty ... daunting, though".

She stopped listening as he entered the friendship territory that was not their own. She was perfectly aware that Rufioh had many admirers, and every quadrant had a waiting list of "whoa, calm down there, buddy", but there was something deep rooted that made her not want to hear about it, not want to process it. She wanted to stamp them all into the ground. He was all she had, and she was perfectly contented with that. She wanted nothing else. She wanted him to want nothing else, too.

It was always that part of their conversation that she announced that she thought that they shouldn't play.

~

Rufioh took to taking long walks in the forest. Damara narrowed her eyes at this, as he constantly complained of back ache and had never been one for long walks, where one typically had time for reflection and thought. His style was typically a bit louder, breaking of things and celebrating fictional festivals from lands that were not his own, in the comfort of his own home.

He went with an urgency and motivation that Damara could not for the of her life figure out what for. Did he have a hot date with some nut creatures? Was he practicing his "moves" on the salamanders? Whatever his occupation was, it proved to be universally elusive.

He announced his intentions every time before disappearing off into the depths, and each time, Damara pressed a salted fish into his hands.

"If you get devoured by a rogue highblood, or some fearsome nut creatures, I shall be able to find you by the smell." Her face was completely straight, but it got a smile out of Rufioh, who had been grazing his hive sized horns onto trees as if he was really, really nervous about something.

She wondered why. It was her curiosity that caused her to follow that time. Curiosity had killed the cat, but she was not a cat. There was a part of her that wished she had the same affinities as felines, as death would, at the risk of sounding dramatic, have been more preferable then that it would be later.

She shadowed his footsteps, following the smell of salted fish and the yellow pacing of his horns. They could have used them as lighthouse in her old hivecluster, she thought errantly. That would have been really convenient.

Out of her reverie she came with a plop, namely the sound of her fish being plopped upon a damp pile of more of her fish. He stopped, and she retreated into the foliage. The dense forest had retreated into a few spindly branches, and from her vantage point she saw Rufioh continue out onto a great stretch, a massive plan. The view was adulterated only by a single, towering hive.

How lucky they must be to have four walls and a roof, Damara thought, having had nothing but timber and leaves for shelter for a very long time. She tried very hard not to recall her hive, and all that it entailed, and was filled with a sense of accomplishment when only a slight pang of guilt filled her chest. Had she been born the victim of a lifetime drama, then dramatic music might have played in the background, but alas, having being born only the victim of a cruel twist of fate, the only soundtrack plaguing her existence at the moment were the rasps of the wind against the empty plains and the slam of doors as Rufioh entered and exited the hive.

He had swapped out his fish in anticipation of this new trinket, a blueblood with the opposite of a brood, tapered to his arm.

Damara wanted to bolt. She wanted to scream and shriek. She wanted to warn Rufioh and tear the blueblood to pieces, rip him to shreds, for he had taken on the face of the only other that she knew.

Evidently, she didn't. She simply stalked through the foliage, following them through the forest, noting the intimacy of their speech, the frequency of contact, while trying to control her shivers. They talked of inane things; hobbies, gossip - "scandalous" things typical of being part of a large group which Damara was in name only. Yet, she considered that a petty reason for deceit. Who would choose to go behind someone's back simply because someone else was fitter to discuss goings with?

As Damara bounced between their footsteps back into the depths of the forest, it became infinitely clear that sharing gossip wasn't so much a priority for them as the sharing other things, such as bodily fluids and personal space. They did things that might have brought a blush to Damara's cheeks, had the pallor not already settled it as their territory.

They were a sprint away from the clearing that they called home. Damara had had enough. She did not want to think of what had gone on here. Indeed, it was much more than that, she wanted to die. She wanted to die and then she wanted to return, to haunt him, to haunt them both, to shriek in their ears and tug at their eyes until they felt the same.  Such a desolate existence felt fitting, she thought.

She stretched her legs out of the brush and ran towards it, making quite some noise. Rufioh gave a little exclamation and detached himself from his partner. Yet she didn't register it, refused to register it. He would just have to explain it to that disgusting troll on his own time.

She entered the clearing and swept her husktop, her knife and needles into her tarpaulin, rekindled a fire into the smoking ashes and fled. The flames caught at the end of her tarpaulin and twisted around her ankles, but it did not deter her.

There was no urgency to leave, with the fire nothing more than a few scorch marks on her trail, yet she wanted to run as fast as she could. She wanted to rid herself of that forest, wanted to be free of the trailing branches and monotonous timber walls that towered over her. The features of the forest had taken on a crackle to them, a certain wakefulness. Whether it was due to flame or flight, Damara did not know. 

The trees began to thin and she burst out of the forest, out onto an open plain. But she did not stop running. The ground levelled out, and the sky revealed itself as a sombre, burning red colour. She stopped to look at it, but could not trap herself in the ambience. So, instead, she sat down and pulled her tarpaulin over her head. Obstinate, she did not cry. Tears had seared across her face on the way there, leaving it resembling a crime scene, or, if you squinted, a very impressionistic painting.

She pulled out her husktop from among her few possessions and booted it up. She could feel her horror pulling into something bluer in her stomach, and she wanted to take action before she was overcome.

So Damara loaded up the chat client and typed. The response was instantaneous.

The meteors came soon after that.


	3. she left with fire in her wake

Very few chose to stumble into the Land of Quartz and Melody, even after it had been given the all clear of its primary inhabitant. The crystal structures did not hold the allure of the brain flooring to be found in more prosperous climbs, and the music that haunted the setting was eerie the first time, but proved to get increasingly old and grating as the canny tune hit its third round.

Damara did not so much mind, though, as the sullen skies and rocks reminded her of her rustic sea clinging home, and the inevitable pity party that would come with other relevant thoughts  was for once, welcome.

In its prime, the music might have been drowned out by the speech of a certain fuchsia backpacker. Her lazy drawl and penchant for mangling innocent little words hid sweeps of elocution and pampering, and did quite a good job of slicing the almost palpable misery that clung to the crystals. The matter of what she was saying suggested that she had been custom made for a role alternate to the one she had tried to escape. Her escapist fantasies had put Damara's to shame, as did most of the other things about her.

"Afterall, if ya can't hold down one measly-ass salmon blood, how you s'posed to hold down the fort here? Mmm, yeah, I think I'm gonna have to send you back, Damz. Don't suppose you'll know which place is which either what with all those meteors back home?"

Damara often laughed at that one. Feebly. Inside her head. The seadwellers's efforts to crumble her self-worth were almost as pathetic as her response, which at the time had been a mere "go fuck yourself". She wouldn't so much mind going back "home", as it was where Rufioh wasn't, and the knowledge that he was nearby gallivanting off (or being gallivanted by) with his noble blue had the rare power to make her want to pull her intestines out of her body and go to sleep forever.

She was right, kind of. After all, who would love silly little Damara Megido? She armed herself with dead wood and flame and clung to delusions of life on the moon. Her arms were like weeds and the rest of her was just as wretched. Her only friend had lost interest in her and hadn't even cared enough to tell her. 

"That blueblood talks too much, but he shore is good at shit. He keeps solvin' those puzzles like cray', and if he can't then he just shows them his muscles and bam! They get themshelves all aflutter and just give up the ghost anyway. Intense, too. I bet he's got some searious dreamboat eyes behind those wacko goggles of his. Jeez, 'Mara, why don't you ever look up? Your foot really ain't that interesting."

She only ever saw those muscles once, when a team effort had been required up against one someone's awful denizen. They had tried to bat her out of the way as she had climbed up onto the monster's head and gorged the eye with a needle. Considering it had been her arms that had provoked a hole in the monster's head, muscles didn't seem to be all they’re cracked up to be.

But her eyes remained large and uncanny, and a peek at her arm did not bring a blush to any cheeks. She sent the seadweller off with a listless prescription of "go fuck yourself."

"Ya know, I've been thinkin'. What Rufioh did to you was totes out of order, don't you think? Yeah, shore, whatshishorns is ree-lllllyyyyy swell, but it wouldn't ha' krilled him to let ya down easy."

"Do you think I have to listen to you if I didn't think that? Can you not see that I am a wreck? Obviously I think it was out of order. Go fuck yourself." That was by far the longest thing Damara had ever said to the seadweller, but alas, they were lost on her flared, foreign ears.

"Didn't catch any of that 'cept "go fuck yourself". But consquiderin' that you spend most of ya time moping behind these ugly crystal scultures, I'm guessin' you think so too."

This was met with no response.

"Whale? Why don't you, I dunno, do somefin' about it? It actually krills me seein' you all curled up in this tiny, shiny wasteland, ya know." The false forged insincerity was so strong in her voice that it was tangible.

"I can imagine that so would putting these needles in your throat, but no one is going to do that."

"Again, didn't get none of that. You need to work on that western o' yours, Damz. No fuckin' clue as to how Rufioh put up with it all those sweeps."

The regular _go fuck yourself_ was not issued, as 'Damz' was busy, wondering that too.

~

Beyond wayward seadwellers that came to talk trash rather than take it out, the encampment had one other visitor. He came, not meaning to clash with tempers or colour schemes, and proved himself to be ambivalent towards the warning whispers of his comrades. He didn't seem to notice the scenery, the mutant red sky or the skags of crystal, just hunched himself into his shoulders uncomfortably and stared at his feet. His new grown wings cradled his back.

It was understandable, as he had not come to see the sights. His purpose was more apologetic, yet it did not seem welcome. The sole habitant of the land did not receive him as she did the seadweller, with meaningless curses. She sent firecrackers towards him, from the tips of her wand formed from needles and flame. They were the same colour as the dulling streaks in his hair, which escaped from the assault only slightly singed.

Damara really wished she could relish that, laugh at it for all of her might, but the stench of his awful red streaks burning just annoyed her. Heartbreak was not suiting her well, and social outcastedness went the full mile and was presently kicking her something worse, he thought. In less eloquent terms, of course.

He held his hands up, a gesture of peace. It reminded her of when they first met. She did not remember if he did it then, but she had also had a wand pointed at his neck then, so it seemed likely.

"Whoa, cool your jets, doll ... I've just come to, uh, talk."

"Because that suited you so well the first time."

"Look, I just came to, uh, apologize, all right?"

He took her silence as her humouring him, and went on.

"I know that what I did was, uh, really bad and obviously I shouldn't have done it ... and I guess you're still pissed at me, but I, uh, really miss you."

She remained silent, but she felt her needles slipping out of her hands. He looked so very sad, and she simply did not have the heart (or the spine) to refuse him when he gestured that he would like to sit next to her.

He started out apologetic, and he seemed sincere. But there are only so many ways one can confess to crime, and so the conversation soon leered into the territory of current affairs.

"It was ... okay, at first. Nice, ya know? I don't know, doll, I think I just liked the whole adventure o' it. Don't that sound funny, for me, at least ... Bein' all alone in that forest can turn your brain ..." He shook his head and looked at her, as if they had just shared a private joke. Damara could feel something pulsing in her forehead. It might have been a vein, "just like in one of your wacked up troll animes," the seadweller had pointed out with some jubilance beforehand.

He continued. "But now, doll ... I dunno. He's just so dang ... clingy ... I guess that's why I miss you, doll. You were more chill. I mean, minus the time where you nearly stabbed me in the throat ..." He laughed once more. Poor, poor Rufioh. Had he not just learned how to shut his mouth, then he wouldn't be in such a sate. For something inside of Damara had snapped.

Presumably, he saw her coming towards him, saw what sort of rage was hidden in her eyes, but he did not move. He protested with a “Whoa, hold up there, tinkerbell –”

Sometimes she wondered why she had not just lectured him; put her well hidden words to good use. Of course, she was of weak stock, and her mouth remained weak when her hands did not. She threw one punch, and then another, and then another. They did not mean anything. She couldn't seem to connect her wrath with anything else. No number of punches could translate into what she'd felt in the bush, on that plain, in this godforsaken game. Most all of his bones were broken before she realized that she didn't even care. She just wanted to get rid of him. And if she had to punch him into the glassy soil, then so be it.

She felt strong hands wrestling her shoulders. She saw glints of gold, trinkets reserved for royalty. How dare she, of all people, try to intervene, when she had told her to do something in the first place? Had she not said that she should do something about it? Damara felt something curdling in her stomach, and turned on the seadweller.

Rage did not subside, not even slightly, until blood of rust and royalty ran together. Such a travesty did not go unnoticed; of course, many loyal subjects came to intervene. Two blue bloods came not only to watch but to stop, and Damara fled. Even in her maddened state, especially in her maddened state, she could still recall the first blue blood that she knew, and she knew that there were no waves to swallow them whole here.

She did not know where she went, only that it carried the scent of decay and looked like lost things. Speaking of which, she was well aware that she would not be welcomed back to the session warmly after that. She had ascended to the highest level of pariah-tier. Had her team mates been any less contended with nursing their wounds and gossiping idly about one another they would probably be setting fires for her lynch mob right now. Shame, really. They could use some entertainment that wasn't based around ridiculing their pals once they turned their heads.

Damara pursed her lips and looked sideways. It was all surprisingly okay with her, despite her rage, which was still burning, fuelled by the persistent sound of waves and wind. She hated the sea, and everything that had come from it, everything that it had brought her to and kept her from.

She missed her lusus. She hurried away from those thoughts and from that place just as she had trained herself to do for many sweeps.

Her timetables where faulty, glitchy in most every way. (That may have been because of the fact that she had to strike them across with her needles if she wanted to get anyway. She had set them on fire, once or twice.) Except, somehow, for their accuracy in getting her to places where drama was fraught. It amused her somewhat that not even her devices where above the pull of teen drama that had doomed the session to fail. She was pretty okay with that. Drama made sabotage a lot easier. After all, if people are involved in trying to outmatch their partner's screaming they'll hardly notice someone planting a bomb in a place that would be crucial later on.

Of course, bombs were not the only things she planted. Occasionally she planted needles in negotiating denizens eyes, or ideas in unsuspecting people's heads. She might have been a reputable gardener, if she had ever gotten her hands on some plants. But alas, it was not in soil that her fate laid, but in creating anarchy, which she found to be quite a lot more rewarding.

Every once in a while, she returned to the Land of Quartz and Melody, to do this, and that. Some visits were more painful than others.  This was where they caught her. It had seemed that her fiddling had sent affairs crashing down hill even further. Still, she found herself straddled in a pair of plaits and locked in a conversation in which she was unable to take no part in. Just like old times.

She spat in her attacker's face, whilst their accomplice rambled on taking no notice. She savoured the seadweller's disgust. She must have godtiered while Damara had been off, ruining everyone's chances. Otherwise, she didn't know where the sea dweller would have got all of those teeth replaced. Or had her nose redone. In fact, she was pretty sure that she'd have to replace her entire head...

The speaker, a blueblood whose primary occupation seemed to be creating background noise, poked her out of her reverie.

She had the manner of a stern schoolhive teacher when she said, "As you might have noticed, we've got ourselves and our session into a bit of a mess. No thanks to either of you." She glared at them both as Damara pulled on the seadweller's braids and the seadweller flicked Damara's horns. Any further damage had been prevented before it could be done by the confiscation of any weapons, pat down and all. (Meenah had seemed to enjoy it some, whereas Damara just made lewd comments. Amazingly, their comprehension had only worsened over time, and it still rewarded her a laugh.)

"But," she continued. "We can fix that. We can reset our session! We can strike a ... a sort of cosmic deal, if you will! At the price of deleting our existences and our efforts in this session, we can have another chance. It won't be us partaking, though. We'll have other roles to play, I'm told."

Damara speculated on that statement. She cleared her throat. "Will we ... Choose roles?"

The speaker looked taken aback, but delighted none the less at the response. "I would imagine that would depend on how much input you're willing to give to our so called cosmic benefactor on the matter."

The fact that she kept using the term 'cosmic' did not prove promising to Damara. It implied that communication could only be attained through nights of wakeful slumber on a non-tangible plane, or having conversations with passing clouds. She had done a fair bit of screaming at the sky in her time, and she had only ever been graced with a sore throat and a little rustle of rain. The entire prospect of communication seemed a bit listless, really.

Regardless, she jumped into the rabbit hole and asked, "How ... Contact?"

The blue blooded speaker smiled, almost coyly. Hardly anyone had ever listened to her, and even fewer could tolerate her for more than ten minutes. This must be somewhat akin to where good trolls go to die for her.

"He is always the first to instigate contact, in my experience, at least. But I'm sure if you charge that thing up, he will come to you soon enough." She pointed towards the abandoned husktop.

Damara considered this for a moment, and concluded that it had about the same likelihood of culminating in something as yelling at the sky. Of course, this probably wouldn't end in rainfall, so she might give it a go.

"So, will you do it?"

She thought for a moment. There was only so much damage that she could do here, with these measly chopsticks. She didn't want to be a wraith forever. After all, you could get so much more done if you weren't a pariah. You could get so much more done if you weren't stuck in a session that you had purposely stabbed in every limb.

She smiled, a sentiment that stretched across her face to a degree that was almost fiendish, and nodded.

~

Damara did a lot of things that she hadn't done in a very long time. Firstly, she opened up her husktop and had a conversation with another sentient being. The keys felt foreign under her fingers, and she kept stumbling over her characters, until they had quite a mind to form something other than words. But what she did produce hit the mark, and she lowered the lid of the husktop with a satisfied little smirk.

Following that, she undertook the perilous journey out of her land and into everyone else’s. It proved itself to be a free slander zone, judging from the amount of gossip that was communicated to her on the wind. Not even the weather could believe that Porrim Maryam had slept with near everyone in the session but had refused Cronus Ampora’s advances. Actually, most everyone could believe that, but what they found most surprising that she had not only refused him, but also insulted his hairstyle and lectured him on his indiscriminate use of hair gel in these uncertain times. After five minutes of being assaulted by such drivel, Damara had decided that full scale destruction of the session would be beneficial for these poor, poor souls.

Naturally, her appearance did not go unnoticed. You kind of lose the ability to slip under the radar once you murder two people and sabotage an entire session in a fit of rage. They did not seem angry, bizarrely, nor did the errant gossip focus on her. She could float through, if that was what she desired.

She had done quite enough moping, and had been angry in spades. Now was clearly a time for laughter and amusement. The sort that could be attained without beating anyone up, or some sort of maddening event. Not on her part, anyway.

The first person to brush past her and stop to produce a "sorry-oh-it's-you-Damara-how-have-you-uh-been?" (A reaction that ended up commonplace) was the green blooded and misty eyed Meulin, less so from disposition than from a tendency to splurge on herbal remedies. She was met with a response of "seriously underfucked, how about you?"

She took this in with several long nods.

"I didn't understand any of that! I'm deaf, remember? But I'm sorry about you and Rufioh. He was a complete jerk to you! That one came right off the shipping wall. That said, he and Horuss would make a much nicer couple if Rufioh wasn't like, some metal horse thing now ..." She trailed off.

Damara was glad that she had taught herself to be apathetic towards any mention of Rufioh's infidelity, otherwise Meulin would have lost that adorable cat tooth thing she was cultivating.

"Allright, then. Please excuse me. I've got some very important business with a dildo, a seadweller and a line of dancing men." She was still learning the ropes of this.

She moved on. That day, she passed about 10 trolls, the majority of which mistook for the acts she was offering for jovial conversation and agreed whole heartedly (with the exception of the male sea dweller, who had clearly been pinning all of his hopes and dreams on such a thing happening, and smiled very wide and edged closer as Damara power walked away. His diligence in the matter was kind of flattering, but his initiative was not.). Their misunderstanding was so funny. She could say anything she wanted, and it wouldn't matter! She wasn't sure why she had not tried this earlier. This was the sort of freedom that not even gratuitous explosion could afford someone.

It would have been a near perfect expedition had she not ventured upon the Nitram Horse and its Blue Blooded Inventor. She found them by accident, vegetating around the Land of Caves and Silence. Nestled in an alcove, the blue blood was nestled in the recess of the metal mammoth’s back. They would have made quite the beautiful couple if one of them didn't have a snout.

"I miss having male genitalia. That way I could get in on that backyard action I clearly just interrupted." She said, as a way of introducing herself.

It didn't go over well, seeing as one of the two parties present could understand what she said.

"Damara!"

Oops. Oh, well, she thought. To quote a proverb from home, when you've dug yourself into a hole, keep digging. You might stumble upon some creature’s den and you can make a supper out of that.

"Sorry. I forgot that I was talking to a backstabber and a prude."

"Damn, girl ... you already beat the shit outta me and got me landed on this freakin’ horse robot, can't ya just let the past go?"

"Not really. It would be very irresponsible of me if I did let it go. As the session's time player."

"Look, I said I was sorry ..."

"Not to my face. It probably would have turned out a lot better. If you had said and done more things to my face." Nope, not even a well-timed eyebrow waggle could salvage that. Regardless, she meant it.

Despite his extra legs and titanium body, Rufioh didn't not seem to have the fight left in him. He just trotted backwards to meet the blueblood's question. He really was handsome, in a wholesome sort of way. Tall, well filled out, vaguely errant in the way of expressions, he had the quality of a brooding hero, right out of a trashy romance novel.

"What is going on?" He whispered.

"Nothin' ... She's just bein' crazy, ignore her."

Damara felt anger swelling in her temples and tried to compress it in her fists. But no, it simply spilled out into her needles, and who was she to disrupt its path? She simply led it upwards and set it free on the roof of the cave. A small avalanche of rocks fell where it spidered to its end. With any luck, the blueblood would be dead.

"If I am crazy, then you are to blame," she addressed to Rufioh, who was digging in the rubble. "I am initiating the scratch in a couple of hours. This was all doomed to fail. _This_ ," she gestured towards the rocks. "--Is doomed to fail. I suppose, in the end you'll all get what you deserved."

She stalked out of the cave.

~

She summoned the scratch through several minutes of solid lecture; a few make shift charts and a deliberate scrape across the surface of the mountainous structure at the edges of her land.

She slid down the scraggy structure with difficulty, and took a moment to look at what she'd done. The sky that tended normally towards pallor was alive with grasping tendrils, spindly hands of light and electricity that split it across like a broken mirror. It would take a while to reach full swing, but when it did, sky gazers, sightseers and alarmed inhabitants alike would all be out to catch a glimpse. Damara wished she could join their ranks, for she had a penchant for destruction, and if there was a catalogue for such things then this would be marked as the event of the century. But alas, she had a date with a seadweller, ten other fractious young trolls, and a bomb.

On her way out of the valley carved of duelling crystals, she decided that in her next life, she wanted to be completely alone. Whatever terrible deeds she would end up doing - because she would end up doing so, that much had been planned for her, and in no iteration of her could it be escaped, were best done without the weight of angered eyes of people she once knew on her.

She did not know what would come of her after the scratch, after the bomb, but she didn't particularly mind. Her ambivalence was probably quite a good sign in this matter, as languishing undetected in a bubble on the fringe of existence with several of her peers is not an activity that she would have welcomed in any other humour. Or any humour, really. Thank the estranged troll God for constant rumours of destruction and narcissistic eternal teen drama, lest she probably wouldn't be able to tide herself through.

As she trudged back towards where the group was assembling, she could hear the rumour mill making what was hopefully its last, begrudging turns and thought, as many iterations of her had and would continue to think, that if death was what would come of this, then it wouldn't be too, too bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that, I believe, is that!
> 
> thank you for your support! writing this monster took about three months and proved to be a very learning process, overall. it taught me that using notepad to write things is never a good idea. neither, incidentally, is putting someone's head onto a metal horse body. but that's more of a life lesson.

**Author's Note:**

> [ the quote in the description is from the fiona apple song, "werewolf", and the title is a snippet from the edna st. vincent millay poem "I shall go back again to the bleak shore" ]
> 
> any discrepancies from canon are due to the fact that no matter how many times you play a minigame, you will always miss certain details because you are too busy trying to get a character to ram themselves through a glacier.


End file.
